


Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild

by RedBlazer



Category: In the Flesh (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Hale Fire, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, F/M, M/M, Most character death means they came back, Post Hale Fire, Recovery, Therapy, Undead Stiles, Warned for Major Character Death, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, in the flesh - Freeform, undead boyfriends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1967583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBlazer/pseuds/RedBlazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, hunger settles in, wakes him up inside the walls of a coffin buried 6 feet underground. And without thinking of anything besides that starvation living deep inside him, he claws and pushes his way up and out from below. All around, he hears the struggles of dozens of bodies given new life, laboring to free themselves just as they did when they were born the first time.</p><p>Together they make their way out of the graveyard and follow the sounds of life.</p><p>All the while, the hunger never abates. Even after he's fed, it's his constant companion.<br/> <br/>---------</p><p>Stiles is a zombie (sorry, Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer) in recovery and about to return home after 4 years of being a mindless killing machine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here. Have all of the feelings I have about In the Flesh wrapped up in a Teen Wolf bow.
> 
> There are some spoilers for the show In the Flesh here, but honestly just for the premise of the show. Basically, following a zombie apocalypse a drug is created that returns zombies to what they were like before they were turned. The show focuses on how they reenter society and the challenges that they face in doing so. It's seriously an awesome show. You don't need to watch it to understand this fic though.
> 
> Enjoy!

There is a light, the sound of a horn piercing the night, metal groaning under the pressure of meeting another force going 60 miles an hour, and then there is nothing.

Not for a long time.

\-----

_Later, hunger settles in, wakes him up inside the walls of a coffin buried 6 feet underground. And without thinking of anything besides that starvation living deep inside him, he claws and pushes his way up and out from below. All around, he hears the struggles of dozens of bodies given new life, laboring to free themselves just as they did when they were born the first time._

_Together they make their way out of the graveyard and follow the sounds of life._

_All the while, the hunger never abates. Even after he's fed, it's his constant companion._

\-----

"That's him. That's Stiles."

There's a fog addling his mind, strong bonds holding him physically to the wall. And still hunger. But when he opens his eyes, he sees a white room and actually notices the details of the place.

And before him, a man with grey hair at his temples and a battered looking police uniform stands. Stiles strains forward on instinct, is instantly pulled back by the chains around his wrists and ankles.

"Stiles?" The man's voice washes over him. There's a familiarness in it that chases away some of the confusion and hunger. He knows this man.

"He can't speak yet." A woman's cool voice sounds. "His brain is still rebuilding itself, making new pathways. It'll be a long journey. But the medication is working. He's one of the lucky ones."

The man nods, reaching out with a hand carefully.

"You shouldn't." The woman says. "He's still rabid."

The man's face falls. He curls his hand into a fist and then releases it, sighing.

"Alright." He says, "There's paperwork, isn't there?"

The woman tells him there is. She leads him out of the room. Two men in white suits press a mask over Stiles' face and take him to a bed where he's strapped down.

And that's how it goes for a long time.

\-----

_In the darkness, the shadow of a ruined house somehow stands out._

_He rambles up the steps and through the empty doorframe._

_A shape emerges from out of nowhere, pressing him against the wall near the door. A face presses in close, a nose sniffing at his collar. It pulls away, white eyes meet his own._

_Not a threat. The other is just like him._

_He drops to the floor, waiting for nothing really. The other continues to move through the house, nearly like he's walking familiar paths._

_So he stays, out of the rain and inside the husk of a home. Until the other paces slowly to the door, pausing to look over his shoulder and moan. He looks up from his place on the floor at the other, gets to his feet and follows._

_They stay together for a long time._

_Until the nets fall upon them and they're surrounded._

\-----

"I am a Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer," The group of 15 all say together, standing and holding hands like they're at an AA meeting in a church basement and not a converted prison. "and what I did in my untreated state was not my fault."

"Very good." Marcy, their facilitator, says. Stiles stares at the place on her belt where there's a taser attached. It's typically not that soothing to know that your therapist is ready, willing and able to shock you into submission if she thinks you're going to try to eat her brains. "Stiles, would you like to start our discussion today?"

"Not really." Stiles answers, "But I want to go home, so I will."

"Great." Marcy says. "Let's start with your treatment. Have you had any flashbacks yet?"

Stiles shrugs. This reminds him all too much of the time he spent with a child psychologist after his mom died. "No. Which I'm going to consider a blessing. I'd rather not remember the time I spent as a soulless killing machine."

"Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer in an untreated state." The girl across from Stiles corrects him. Her long blonde hair only covers half of her head. Her scalp is bare on the other side, bisected by a surgical scar from the operation that killed her. "Take the out. Thank your lucky stars that you get to live forever and all that bullshit."

"Erica." The boy next to her says in a soft voice. He doesn't have any scars. He fell under the ice of a lake in town and drowned the winter before the Rising. "Don't."

She rolls her eyes at him and crosses her arms over her chest. "Whatever."

They've grouped all the PDS kids in their teens together. Something about how they were going to all end up back in school together, so they should bond now before they go back. Support systems and all that. Needless to say, they pretty much have their work cut out for them.

"About that." A boy says, raising a hand. "If we don't have a guardian to go back home to, and we've been assigned a foster home, when will we know where we're going?"

Marcy shakes her head. "You'll know when I know, Isaac."

Isaac rolls his eyes and sits back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I just want to get back to my life." Stiles says, "And I mean that in a totally not ironic way. I want to play Halo with my best friend, Scott. I want to bug my dad about what he eats. I want to forget this all happened to me."

"Denier." Erica coughs into the sleeve of the orange jumpsuit she's wearing. Stiles glares at her. She glares right back.

"Let's move on, shall we." Marcy commands them all. They go through the group, one by one until it's time to go pick up their cover-up mousse and contact lenses. Marcy tells them it's important that they practice how they will look when they reenter society soon. She tells them that a good first impression can get you anywhere. Stiles reads between the lines, she doesn't think that going around looking like an obvious PDS case will do them any favors.

"Hey." A voice says as they line up. Stiles turns around to see the boy from earlier who asked about his foster home standing behind him. "Your friend. What's his name?"

Stiles frowns, "Scott. Scott McCall. Why?"

The boy looks away for a moment. The PDS's taken all the color out of his hair and face. Isaac looks pretty much like he's been hit in the face with a blackboard eraser. Stiles' dark hair stayed mostly the right color. He's lucky.

"Before," Isaac tells him. "Before the Rising, I worked with my dad."

"Good for you." Stiles says, turning forward as they begin to move.

Isaac touches his shoulder. "I just mean, we worked in the cemetery."

A cold weight settles in Stiles' belly. Even colder than he is already. If he had a heart that beat any more, it probably would be going like crazy. "Say it." Stiles forces himself to say.

"He died." Isaac says. "I'm so sorry."

Stiles walks numbly along with the rest of the group.

Okay. Now he's really got to get out of here. Because Scott died before that magical date four years ago when the dead rose from their graves all over the planet. The Rising happened and marked the beginning and the ending of the Zombie plague. Whoever rose that day are the only ones that ever came back, and no bite or injury ever turned anyone who wasn't already dead.

He's got to get out. He's got to find out what happened to Scott, if he fell during the Rising and never made it to the facility like Stiles, or the medication hasn't worked on Scott and he's been taken care of. Barring all of those options, Scott could still be out there.

Okay. So Stiles wants to go home for two reasons. To make sure his dad eats a vegetable or two.

And to track down his BFF.

\-----

_There's screaming. Always screaming. Sometimes gunshots. But in the end, mostly screaming._

_It goes on like that, the two of them drifting into town and then back through the woods to the refuge of the house._

_Sometimes others like them arrive. The other one who let him stay stands at the door and stares out at them with wide, white eyes and a snarling face._

_The other doesn't let them in. He doesn't wonder why. He doesn't wonder anything._

_He just is._


	2. Chapter 2

_He is trudging through a world of white. All of it cold and making his skin harden until he feels it cracking at his joints. And still hunger pushes him on and on. Through the cold. Towards signs of life._

_He continues on and on until his legs simply give out and he surrenders to the cold. There, ahead the other like him stops and turns on wobbly legs of his own. The other walks to him unsteadily and stands there for what could be hours or minutes._

_If he could think it or say it, he would tell the other to go on. Like this there is no loyalty, only hunger. Without him as a hunting partner, the other will move on._

_Only then the sound of crunching ground sounds and the other rests next to him._

_Above them the sky pours down chilling white snow that covers them until they can’t move._

_When the sun eventually returns and melts the sky’s efforts to bury them, they emerge into a newly green world smelling of promise. The two stand once again, bumping shoulders as they continue as though unheeded._

_As though they haven’t been resting in that exact spot for weeks in the cold. They spring from the earth just like the new life that only a new season can bring._

\----------

“Blue or brown?” The man asks again. Stiles blinks, shaking his head. He feels goosebumps rise all over his arms, but when he looks down there is only the grey flesh that’s been there since he came back to himself. The man at the table sighs again, picking up two boxes from the stack before him and shoving them into Stiles’ hands. “Brown eyes.” The man tells him, jerking his head towards where the line continues on down the hall.

Besides the boxes of contact, he’s also given cover-up mousse and some clothes so he won’t have to return home in the grungy clothes he was found in. Also the clothes he was buried in now that he thinks about it. He doesn’t actually know what they looked like now that he thinks of it. He hopes it wasn’t a suit. How uncool would it be to be a zombie in a suit like he’s on his way to church?

“This is bullshit.” The girl with the curly blonde hair ahead of Stiles says as they file in a line back to their rooms. “We shouldn’t have to hide to reenter.”

The large boy in front of her looks back at the girl, shaking his head. “Erica, do you want to die again? For real this time? You need it to protect yourself.”

The girl sighs. “We died and came back to life. That’s a miracle. I’m not about to cover that up just to make other people comfortable.”

“So then do it so you can get the hell out of here.” The other boy, Boyd says. Stiles likes him. He’s always seemed the most level-headed in their group. He’s the one who talks Erica down and offers them surprisingly sage wisdom about what it will be like to go home. “I’ve been here for longer than all of you. Just be glad that we’ve got this stuff.”

Boyd was part of the first wave to get the treatment. Stiles remembers him telling the group that a few months back. There was an effort to keep the teenagers in recovery for longer because their brains weren’t fully developed in the first place. So a group of the older PDS cases were released back into society. Some of them couldn’t cope and went off their meds. Some of them voluntarily came back to the treatment center. Very few of them stayed put after they got out.

Now they’re trying to get them to build social structures before they leave. So once they go back to school, they can have each other to support them. It’s all lovely in theory but Stiles doesn’t really remember much about Isaac, Boyd, and Erica back when they were alive. He doesn’t think it will be that easy to count on them when they go back to school.

That’s the moment when Stiles realizes what the man meant when he asked him brown or blue. He was asking about his eye color.

Stiles stops in his tracks, ripping open on the boxes to see that there are brown contacts resting inside.

“My eyes aren’t brown.” Stiles says quietly, staring at the completely ordinary looking brown contacts. There’s nothing spectacular about them. No range of color or any details that make them different. 

The people behind him in line all grumble as they are forced to stop. Isaac taps him on the shoulder. “You okay?”

Stiles shakes his head. “My eyes aren’t brown. They gave me brown contacts.”

Isaac audibly sighs behind him. “I know, man. There isn’t any space of individuality. But for right now you’re going to have to deal."

“I don’t have to deal with any of this.” Stiles says, his hands shaking as he stares at the box. “This is bullshit. My eyes aren’t brown. They’re hazel.”

Erica spins around once she seems to realize that their part of the line has been cut in two. “Jesus.” She says, stomping up to him. Her eyes are the same milky white as his own. “You get what you get and you don’t get upset. Didn’t you ever read that fucking book when you were a kid?”

Stiles shakes his head. “No! I can’t wear these.”

Boyd’s walking over now, looking around a bit as there are increasingly loud grumbles from the line about having stopped. He takes Stiles by the forearm and pulls him down the hall until they catch up with the rest of the group. Marcy, their facilitator is none the wiser. She’s still talking about what an opportunity this is from them to return to their normal lives. 

The teenagers are all housed in what used to be the protective custody wing of the prison. This way they have a smaller place and the guards can keep a closer eye on them. Once they’ve all made it inside, the outer doors are locked and they’re free to hang out in the common areas. It would be like summer camp if they weren’t all dressed like felons.

“It’s gonna be okay.” Boyd tells Stiles, pulling him towards the corner. Isaac and Erica follow him. They form a sort of barrier around Stiles so no one can see that he is utterly losing his mind. “I know you think this is a big deal. But they’re just contacts. And they don’t change who you are.”

Stiles shakes his head. This is so stupid. He’s not the person who loses it over this kind of thing. He’s always been the strong one. Stiles was the one who comforted people at his mother’s funeral and made the arrangements for people to bring them dinners and food. He’s used to taking control in a crisis. And yet Boyd’s got a huge hand on his shoulder, squeezing in a comforting way.

“I’m not going to look like me.” Stiles says in a tight voice. “None of us are gonna look the same. We all have the same eyes. I don’t have hazel eyes.”

What he means is this—he doesn’t have his mother’s eyes.

Not anymore.

Not ever again. 

\----------

_Sometimes out in the world, there are others like them. And their mouths hang open, fresh blood soaking into their clothing. And if he could name that feeling inside him, he would remember that it was called jealousy._

_He and the other one like him tag along with groups, surrounded on all sides by the growls and moans of a people that will never be satisfied. A group that moves for one purpose, filling the hunger inside of them._

_Still, there are times when a group like theirs meets another. One with a completely different purpose._

_And the guns will go off.  Bone and brain matter splattering across the ground. A sharp impact explodes in his shoulder, knocking him back a few paces._

_His dead eyes narrow on the bright brown eyes of a girl with a black hood and long dark hair. Her smile is a wicked gleam as she raises the crossbow in her hands and fires._

_The other one knocks him to the ground as the arrow hisses through the air, embedding in the other’s forearm._

_He’s pulled from he ground by strong hands and set on his feet._

_The other pushes him away from the sounds of the screams even while he keeps trying to fight the other and go back. He can smell the blood now, knows there’s food and it makes him nearly weep to know the other is pulling him away from it all._

_Eventually he gives up fighting and the other leads him through the woods. Back to the house. Back to the darkness._

_They don’t join another group after that._


	3. Chapter 3

_Like this, it’s more calm than anything. There’s just one thing on his mind. And it is always there. The hunger gnaws and never goes away. But between the moments when they seek out life, there is a quiet that settles in._

_In the house he feels safe. With the other like him there, he feels protected._

_They don’t sleep. But they do rest. Sometimes they don’t move for days. They leave the house and don’t return for days or weeks._

_Still. They stay together, always operating in each other’s orbit. The other keeps him within arms reach, pulling him back when he goes to investigate something the other doesn’t like._

\---------

They don’t have a television inside the treatment center. Not that Stiles really wants to watch TV. He doesn’t have any idea when his favorite shows came back on. Or if they came back at all. That’s probably harder to deal with than anything else.

But then he remembers Scott and feels like a total asshole.

Yeah, he doesn’t need to know what happened on NCIS over the last 4 years. He’d trade whatever happened to Gibbs for knowledge of where Scott is and what state he’s in.

God, he’s basically the worst. Worst friend. Worst zombie. They found him about a mile from his house. Isaac was three states over when he was captured. Stiles didn’t even have it in him to try to see the country while he was one of the living dead.

Not that was his last chance, now that he’s got eternity ahead of him, it would be easy enough for him to see the world over and over again.

He’s got to finish school first though. Apparently there’s no getting out of senior year and SATs even if you have a pretty legitimate reason for not being in class.

That’s why Stiles would like to be briefed on what’s been going on in the outside world while he’s spent months of his life strapped to a bed and in therapy with a bunch of other grey-faced kids. He’d gotta get in some TV time before he goes back just to get a feel for the world that’s moved on since he’s been gone.

Something tells him that his dad isn’t going to be completely straight with him about what’s happened. Even though Stiles’ been like an adult since he was a kid, his dad was always the one to not give it to him straight. If he’s walking back into a warzone, Stiles would like to know about it.

 

_\---------_

 

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

_He looks up from his place on the floor as the other lumbers into the room, his leather coat squeaking faintly from the water coming through the ceiling._

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

_The other looks up at the place where two floorboards have a gap, letting in a constant stream of water._

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

_The other growls to himself, reaches up and forcefully pushes the two boards back together._

_The drips stop._

_The other sighs to himself, standing there for long minutes. The other returns to his nearly constant laps of the destroyed house. His foot is knocked gently by the other’s boots on one of his rounds._

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

_The other stops, head tilted to the side. He walks away in search of the sound, growling to himself._

_From his place on the floor, he absently traces deep scour marks in the floor with his fingers._

_When the rain lets up they go out into the waking world now asleep in the middle of the night._

_They do eat that night._

_\---------_

 

That face staring back at Stiles in the mirror is not him. For one thing, his skin has never been this good. And for another, the cover-up mousse lives up to its name. In addition to covering the gray pallor that PDS leaves behind, it’s also covered all of the moles and freckles on his face.

Beside him in the long line of sinks, Isaac’s spraying his hair with something that smells awfully like gasoline.

Stiles gags, “Couldn’t you do that somewhere else?” He asks the other boy.

Isaac glares at him. But he’s only got half of his hair covered, so he looks like Cruella DeVille. “Like where? Outside. I’m so sure that the guards would let me out just to do my hair.”

Stiles rolls his eyes and continues covering his face and hands. It feels a bit like putting on a mask, working with this stuff. It sits unnaturally on his face in a claustrophobic way. It doesn’t look natural. He seriously doubts that anyone in their right mind would be fooled by this stuff.

Still it could be worse.

Erica marches into the men’s room holding a blonde, curly wig. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Stiles stands from his place at the sink. “This is the men’s room!” He yells at her for dramatic effect, covering his nipples though his shirt on reflex.

“Whip it out and prove it, Stilinski.” Erica counters.

“I retract my earlier statement. Welcome.” Stiles says, going back to the mirror.

“They want me to wear this to cover my scar.” Erica says, absently touching the bald side of her head. Personally Stiles thinks she looks like an Amazon with her hair like that. But he doesn’t want to die again. So he’s not going to comment on it.

“You remember what we talked about.” Boyd says, turning from the sink to look at her. He’s seriously their Yoda at this point. “If you want to get out, you’ll go along with it. Otherwise you’ll just have to stay here though the next group.”

“This is America.” Erica says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I have rights.”

“Uh.” Isaac says, rubbing the mousse into his skin. He looks tan and healthy. Stiles looks like an extra on the Jersey Shore. Is that show still even on? “Hate to remind you. But you legally died. That tends to take away your rights to anything but a proper burial. From what I’ve heard, they’re still trying to work out what’s going to happen to us when we go back home. Like if we’ll vote, and what will happen to our taxes because we’ll technically live forever so we’ll never retire.”

“Stop it.” Erica says, holding up the wig at him. “You’re making this a legitimate debate, and I just came here to complain. I don’t want anyone to reason with me. I just want people to listen to this problem and agree that it sucks.”

Isaac sighs. “Fair enough.”

 

\----------

 

Stiles begins to worry that he’s a bit defective as they stand in line, waiting for their injections. A few days from now, he’ll be doing this in the comfort of his own home. But for now he and about a thousand others are standing in line, all covered in sloppily done cover-up mousse.

Ahead of him, Boyd turns around and lowers his head so that the technician can get to the port between two of his vertebrae. He shudders and melts against the wall once he’s injected. Two guards stand at the ready with cow prods just in case Boyd’s flashbacks make him violent. Stiles has seen it happen before to other people. It’s not pretty.

But Boyd takes it like a champ and seconds later he’s rising on his own strength and stealthily wiping at the corner of his eye with the back of his hand.

Erica goes next, cussing like a sailor and pounding the wall with a fist.

And then it’s Stiles’ turn. He stares at the wall and waits for the blinding pain to take over his body once he receives his injection. This stuff is supposed to rebuild the connections in his brain that were destroyed by PDS. That means he should be getting flashbacks of what he did before treatment.

Only, he hasn’t. Hasn’t had a single memory come back from the time between him driving home on a raining Sunday night and waking up strapped to a foreign bed with men in white scrubs peering down at him.

Stiles would like to keep it that way. If his stomach could turn anymore, it would certainly do that at the thought of having to relive any of what he did when he was gone. As a part of their group therapy, each of them has tried to discuss what it was they did in an untreated state.

So Stiles has heard enough horror stories from the others to know he doesn’t want to even go there.

He steps away from the wall and it’s Isaac’s turn to go next. Isaac’s always the one who ends up swooning after treatment. He goes all ragdoll and sometimes no one catches him. This time though, Isaac screams after his injection and Stiles is there to steady him, Boyd at his side. The technicians look at each other, telling them to move along. They’re operating in the fuzzy time where their injections will begin to wear off and sometimes people get a little hungry in line.

Boyd and Stiles work together to get Isaac out of the dank little room where they do the treatment. Between them, Isaac’s got his eyes closed and isn’t helping them at all to get out of there.

Once they take him back to their cells, they set him down on his bunk.

“He went full on Scarlett O’Hara.” Erica remarks, sitting on the edge of Isaac’s bunk and wrapping a hand around his ankle.

She wants everyone to think she’s some badass. But she’s a total softie at heart.

“Just give him a minute.” Boyd says, sitting on his own bunk across from Isaac’s. Stiles has the top bunk above Boyd’s but he sits next to the other boy instead of climbing up there.

They sit in silence until Isaac blinks awake, sitting up so fast that Erica jumps.

“You okay, man?” Stiles asks.

Isaac shakes his head, staring at the far wall. His eyes are a bright blue from the contacts, but some of the cover-up mousse on his cheek has worn away, exposing grey flesh. “I think I killed my dad.”

That’s definitely not what Stiles had been expecting.

Stiles looks over at Boyd, as their resident sensei in all things zombie, he’s the one who offers them pearls of wisdom. But right now he looks totally thrown for a look.

Isaac’s eyes are wide and there’s a shocked look on his handsome face. He reaches up with a hand and covers his own mouth. His whole body recoils and he lets out a high pitched sound that Stiles thinks is a sob.

Until it just continues on and on. “You sick puppy.” Erica says from her spot on the end of his bed, her face contorted in horror. “He’s laughing!”

And he is, full body laughs that actually make the bed shake.

“Jesus.” Stiles mutters to himself.

Boyd looks pretty much like someone has kicked him in the balls.

“I’m sorry.” Isaac says between gasping for air and belly laughs. “You don’t understand. He killed me first. Two days before the rising. He pushed me down the stairs and then put me in the freezer in the basement until he could find a way to get rid of me. And then I woke up and found him in the living room, watching TV like his son wasn’t dead. So I killed him.”

It’s not at all the right thing to do in this situation. One does not give props to someone who just admitted to patricide.

Still, Stiles rises from Boyd’s bed and walks over with one hand outstretched.

Isaac high-fives him, face spilt into a wide grin.

When Marcy finds them moments later, they’re laughing so loudly that all the other PDS kids are looking in on them like monkeys in the zoo.

 

\---------

 

_They don’t sleep. But they do rest._

_He stretches out on the floor. The other walks circles and circles around the house like always._

_Until the other passes him on his millionth circuit of the night and he reaches out to grab the other’s ankle. The other stops, making a gurgling growl at him._

_He lets the other one like him go, expects to hear the other go lumbering through the house again._

_Instead the other stretches out on the floor next to him._

_Their white eyes stare lifelessly up at the sky. And in the darkness they rest. They do not sleep._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love love love comments! and kudos!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbetaed and a little different than I usually tell Stiles' story.

Stiles and the others are loaded into a school bus a few days later, wearing the same jeans and black tshirts that they were given at the center. Stiles’ eyes feel itchy from the contact lens and he keeps reaching to touch his face. Isaac slaps his hand away.

“You’ll rub it all off.” He says, not for the first or even the tenth time that day.

Physically Stiles can’t feel butterflies in his stomach anymore. He doesn’t feel much of anything at all. PDS has killed his insides and left him immortal. But he still has the phantom quirks of his old body memorized. He remembers the sick warm feeling of anxiety and what it was like to hear his own heartbeat in his ears.

Right now he’s reliving as much anxiety as his body can feed him with it’s major differences.

The roads that they drive on are far less crowded with cars than Stiles had expected. As he stares out, there are still reminders of the rising all over the place. Heavily fortified farms with tall fences made out scrap metal. Large signs painted over with the words ‘Danger: Infested’ still littering the countryside. Sometimes there are crosses near the edge of the road.

He’s not coming back to the world that he left. There’s no trying to deny it.

Isaac seems far calmer. It’s probably because he knows he’s not going home of an emotionally and physically abusive asshole. They’ve placed him with a family that agreed to take in PDS cases. Erica and Boyd sit in the seat in front of Stiles and Isaac.

It seems like Erica needs a little encouragement. “School will be fine.” Boyd says in a low voice. “You, me, Stiles, and Isaac are all gonna be there for you.”

She nods her head, absently running her hand through the curly wig she’s wearing. Stiles doesn’t remember much about Erica from before the rising. An image of a shy looking girl, swimming in large unattractive sweatshirts comes to mind. She’d been a newer student. And in a school like Beacon Hills, everyone already knew one another. She hadn’t made any real friend before she died.

Stiles feels like an asshole. The four of them seemed to be pretty much a group of outcasts, and now they were returning to finish their senior year. The kids they would have classes with had been freshman back then. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

“If anyone says anything,” Stiles says, “I’ll do my best rabid impression. And they’ll piss their pants.”

Boyd casts a sharp look over the seat. “Not if you don’t want to get shot. Again.”

Stiles rolls his eyes and absently pokes at the hole in his shoulder where a bullet had lodged in the bone there. He can’t feel any pain there, though sometimes it does tingle.

“You take all the fun out of everything.” Stiles says, leaning back in his seat and pressing his forehead against the window.

Hours later they pull up to a set of gates the Stiles has never seen before. Slowly, the bus pulls through.

What had once been the quaint main street of Beacon Hills now looks like an Army base. Two lines of Humvees and armored trucks line the streets. Standing beside the cars are at least two dozen men and women in hunter green fatigues. Armbands with the initials ‘HVF’ circle their biceps. Each of them have a rifle strapped to their back and a gun on their hip.

Stiles’ eyes go wide. “Wasn’t aware we had a militia.”

“Human Volunteer Force.” Boyd explains. “Basically filled in for the army when they were overrun.”

“They don’t look so friendly.” Stiles says, frowning at the group as they pass. There’s an old man siting in the driver’s seat of the last Humvee. His face is a grizzled mess of wrinkles and a grey beard. He spits on the ground as the bus passes and pull his car out behind them, following their slow procession into town.

“Something tells me, they aren’t exactly pleased we’re coming home.” Isaac says.

“This isn’t home anymore.” Erica says cryptically. “They moved on without us.”

“Jesus. Get a little bleaker. I beg of you. I’m not depressed enough that I can’t eat or drink ever again.” Stiles grumbles. Isaac snickers beside him. Clearly they’re both going to be the problem children of this weird little group.

The bus crawls through the town as people gather on the sides of the road to peer out at them. It’s like the saddest parade to ever happen. Stiles recognizes some of them. He doesn’t raise his hand to wave or anything. Judging by the stern look on their faces, they aren’t exactly happy to be having PDS cases back.

Eventually they pull up to another gate. A high chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top has been erected around the high school. There’s also been wooden structures put up on the roof. It looks like they’ve been using the school as a base during the rising,

The bus stops at the front doors, where it used to when Stiles rode it every day before he got his license. There are cars in the parking lot, many of them with ‘Beacon Hills Police Department’ printed on the side.

“Please make your way to the front of the bus in an orderly fashion.” Says the guard with a taser at the front. Stiles has never felt more like an outsider than he does walking the short distance to the front of the bus and down the stairs.

He steps foot out into the sunlight for the first time in years. Really steps out into it. Stiles sees the color of the sky and isn’t surrounded by the high concrete walls of the prison yard. The world feels like a sprawling thing around him. Like a glass overflowing onto the table when before it had been contained.

Stiles breathes in the fresh air and closes his eyes just to really feel the breeze against his face.

And then the honking and the yelling begins.

The group having just departed the bus have formed a small group, looking for their loved ones, but apprehensive to leave the herd. And there’s a group that looks like family a little ways across the parking lot there to meet them. But it’s a bit like a school dance. No one really knows who to make the first move.

Stiles looks around at the source of the noise. Sure enough the Humvee with the man in it that followed them there has pulled up to the gate where a couple of Beacon Hills cops are standing guard, a heavy metal door swinging shut.

“I built this goddamn fence.” A voice yells out. “Don’t you tell me I can’t come in there. Who was the one guarding you all while you were cowering away with your families in that school.”

The man’s jumped out of the car now and stands up against the chain-link fence, yelling at the cops.

“You listen to me you little creeps,” the man yells, pointing at the group of Stiles, Boyd, Erica, and Isaac. “I’ve got my eyes all over this town. And if you think you can just waltz back in here after the mess that you caused, you’re wrong.”

“It looks like you’re the one causing trouble, grandpa.” Erica yells back, her face scrunched up in anger.

“Erica, don’t.” Boyd says beside her.

“No.” Erica says, standing firm. “I spent 17 years of my life never speaking back. I’m not going to keep doing it forever. So this asshole needs to know that we have just as much right as anyone to live our lives!” She finishes, yelling in the direction of the man.

Then a familiar (if battered) police car pulls up to the fence, the cops swing open the gate quickly. Stiles doesn’t even have time to react before the drivers side door swings open and his father steps out, instantly rounding on the place where the old man is standing.

“Gerard.” The Sheriff says in his cop voice. “I have put up with you and your merry band of gun-toting hunters for years. It ends now.”

Holy shit. His dad is actually terrifying.

Stiles preens a bit as the sheriff and Gerard devolve into calling each other decreasingly clever swear words. Finally the sheriff turns around and actually surveys the crowd standing at the school. His eyes lock on Stiles.

Somehow Stiles has retrained the way that his throat would feel like it was closing up when he get emotional. Right now he feels more like a child than a reanimated thing. He’s nearly giddy.

Because even though the man walking towards him is graying at the temples and there’s new frown lines around his eyes and mouth. He’s still raising his arms at his sides as he walks towards his son. Just like he did when he picked up Stiles from his first sleepover that he had to come home from an hour later. Just like he did when he arrived at the hospital to find out his wife had died.

Stiles runs to him. And he doesn’t care if he looks like a terrified little boy. He doesn’t give a fuck.

It’s been years since he’s been able to hug his dad. And the fact that both of them are standing there is an actually miracle.

He even smells the same when he wraps strong arms around Stiles’ body, hauling him in for a tight hug. One of his hands is holding the back of Stiles’ head like he just needs to make sure he’s really there.

And if he could cry, Stiles would.

Because Erica is so totally wrong. Home isn’t the place where you grew up. Home is the people that care about you and want you to be okay. So even if it turns out that the house is gone and everyone in Beacon Hills treats him like a leper, he’s home. Because he’s got his dad there again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I love feedback!


	5. Chapter 5

_The house reels him in like gravity acting on a falling object. It pulls him in over and over. Though, he never really ever realizes that's where he's going. The other always ends up in the burned out house. He, on the other hand, steers them towards a rather intact small house, with gold light shining from the windows and a totaled blue Jeep in the driveway._

_The other stays in the yard as he ventures up the back steps and to a screen door with a broken latch._

_Its not the first time. Wont be the last._

_In these early days, there is still power and light. He hears the vague sounds of voices echoing through the house from a television on somewhere. The windows, which will be boarded up days from now, are unguarded._

_If he really concentrates, he can reach his hand up and tug halfheartedly at the door knob. The screen door swings open with a creaking sound._

_A shadow passes across one of the windows. If he really knew what he was and where he was, he would probably worry that he had just gone up the back steps to the home of the most proficient gun owner in the whole town. Instead, he acts on instinct and answers the sirens call of the small house on the small street._

_Because once, it had been his home. And the light pouring through the windows is acting like a beacon, drawing him in._

_The curtain covering the backdoor's window pulls away, revealing a gaunt face and hollow eyes.  The man on the other side of the door drawls in a sharp breath, and the exhale is a guttural, hurt sound._

_"Stiles?" The sound is muffled by the glass separating them._

_He can't respond. He doesn't know how. Doesn't know who and what he is. What power brought him back. And how he's even standing now when there's still dirt under his fingernails from the graveyard._

_The man on the other side of the glass puts his hand up, touching the cool surface between them. His face crumpling into tears that the boy on the other side doesn't understand. He raises his hand as well, hunger boiling inside him._

_The glass separating them shatters as he pushes his battered hand through its surface. The man cries out, pulling away. But the boy is too fast for him, he reaches into the house and his fingers catch on the man's wrist, yanking him back towards the broken window._

_The older man throws all of his weight away from him, the sound of ripping fabric and pain sound in the silent night all around them. He yanks his wrist out of the boy's grip, holding his shoulder. His arm is hanging limply to his side as he backs into the house._

_He stands there, waiting. Waiting for the man to return. Waiting for anything really._

_Only then footsteps sound on the steps and a hand takes his sleeve. The other pulls him away from the house._

_Around them, the still night is beginning to sound more and more like chaos as the lost return home to the open arms of unsuspecting loved ones._

_He still keeps coming back to the house. Even when there is no more shining light inside. After the wooden slats have gone up over the windows and the back steps have been chopped down._

_He keeps coming back. And sometimes he looks up to see the silhouette of tall man standing in that kitchen window._

_They don't meet face to face again until he's in the processing room of the treatment center. And even then, he can't remember who the man is._

\---------

His room is exactly the same. There's even an empty water glass resting on his bedside table where he must have left it the night before the accident. Stiles walks over and picks it up, there's no dust resting at the bottom of the glass or anything. He walks to the computer sitting in the corner and runs his fingers across the screen. When he pulls them away, there's nothing there except for his own skin. His dad must have come in and cleaned the place up before Stiles got in that afternoon.

But it still even smells exactly the same. Like fabric softener and coffee. The wall of the house close in around him and he feels protected, not overwhelmed like in the treatment center. Plus there's the whole fact that Stiles is related to the guy who carries a gun in this place. There's way less of a chance that his dad is going to taser him here. Actually, zero chance.

The soft hum of the radiator and floorboards creaking as his dad moves through the house downstairs fall right into place. Stiles is surprised at just how not out of place he feels. His heart doesn't beat, his skin is cold and grey. But home still feels like home to him.

Stiles changes out of the jeans and shirt he was given into a worn looking flannel shirt and old jeans with holes in the knees from falling off his bike a few summers ago.

Wait. No.

A few summers before the accident.

That would make it 7 years ago really.

Holy shit. Stiles should be 22 right now. He should be in his senior year of college rather than going back to repeat his last year at Beacon Hills High School.

His dad finds him just standing in the middle of his bedroom, staring at nothing a few minutes later. "Stiles?" He asks, knocking on the doorframe like he used to when he would come to tell his son that he was about to leave for a night shift. "You okay?"

And he isn't. He really isn't. Apart from the whole dying and coming back to life thing, he has to go through school again. Stiles is going to be this person on the cusp of being an adult for the rest of his life. And all those things that his mom always told him would smooth out never will. He'll always be this kid with a mouth too big for his face, and gangly arms.

Stiles nods absently. As much to reassure his dad as to reassure himself. His dad's the one who spent years wondering whether his son was wandering the woods surrounding Beacon Hills brainless and in search of his next meal or if he had been dispatched by someone like that old man who had pulled up at the high school.

"You hungry?" Stiles asks, deflecting.

His dad frowns, hands on his hips. He's still wearing his police uniform but it's obvious that it hasn't been pressed in a while. The seam of his right shoulder's been reattached in thread that doesn't match and two of the buttons are white rather than the tan color of his uniform shirt.

"What happened to your shirt?" Stiles asks. He turns to his closet, flipping through his jackets in search of his favorite red hoodie.

His dad looks over at his own shoulder, grimacing. He tries to school his features quickly, but Stiles has spent his whole life reading the kind of silent cues that an only child in a single parent household can catch. Stiles knows something is wrong.

"Nothing that a new shirt won't fix." the sheriff says easily, one hand awkwardly touching the seam. Still. It seems like something is going on that Stiles is out of the loop in. Because the shirt looks like it’s practically threadbare in places. Did he still dress in his Sheriff’s uniform even when the world was burning down around him?

Stiles furrows his own eyebrows at his dad. "It was one of them, wasn't it?"

His dad nods. "I fared pretty well compared to some others." he says, eyes darting around the room. "It's not in there. Your red jacket."

Stiles turns around, pushing up his sleeves until he realizes that the cover-up on his hands only extents to his wrists and so he pulls his sleeves down again. He's starting to feel a little anxious.

"You buried me in that hoodie, didn't you?" Stiles asks. It's a long moment that hangs in the air. His dad nods. "At least in death I was still comfortable."

And wow. His dark sense of humor has only gotten darker, if that was even possible. But his dad had him buried in his favorite clothes instead of a suit. There was probably gossip around town about the town’s sheriff burying his last remaining relative in the clothes he would have worn to school. Maybe they thought his dad was cheap, or that they were so poor that his dad couldn’t afford to get him the right outfit.

His dad huffs a rough laugh. "Dinner?"

Stiles nods, closing his closet door and following his dad through the house. "You know I don't eat though, right?" Stiles asks.

Stiles might not eat, but he can still cook. He pushes his dad into the living room and goes to the kitchen to put together something for his dad. There's a bat hanging on a hook next to the back door that wasn't there before.

And its little reminders like that, and the ripped shirt his dad is wearing that really hit home. Stiles had been so far removed from everything going on. First because of the PDS and then when the world began to come back from the brink, he was in the treatment center. The world that he left behind is certainly not what it is now.

From his limited interaction with the outside world, it seems like the people he knew his whole life are far less trusting of each other. They’ve physically constructed walls to separate themselves from each other. Stiles thinks that mentally, the same thing is going on.

What that means for school, he doesn’t want to consider. It was hard enough, only having Scott as a friend. They were pretty much known by everyone. But they didn’t know anyone. Not really. And there is a difference.

“What about Scott?” Stiles asks out of nowhere. “Is there any news about him?”

His dad shakes his head, a faraway look crossing through his eyes. “Nothing that we’ve been able to track down. He rose, the ground at his gravesite was disturbed. But none of the hunters have reported a sighting. We’ve been monitoring the captures for the last few months, ruling out cases to be sure none of them turned out to be Scott. We were hopeful when the Lahey boy showed up—seventeen, curly hair, slight build. But of course, you know it was Isaac and not Scott.”

Stiles fixes his dad a sandwich from the meager options in the refrigerator. He reminds himself that he needs to find out what the grocery situation is in town. Can’t have his dad eating TV dinners and canned food every day.

They sit at the table across from one another. Stiles keeps staring at the boarded up window to the back door. He remembers getting goosebumps, doesn’t get them now. But he feels an overwhelming sense of guilt looking at that window.

His dad looks over his shoulder at the door. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Did you kill them?” Stiles asks, and it’s incredibly rude. It really is. But when he thinks of the zombies like him in their rabid state, he feels a bond with them. He feels like he needs to know if his dad was one of those hunters who got a kick out of taking down a Z or two.

His dad shakes his head. “Not that one. That was the first night. After it happened—“ His dad looks away from Stiles and the window, down at the table. “When I realized it wasn’t—they weren’t right—I had to get down to the station and try to organize some kind of defense effort. We put on riot gear and rode around with bull horns telling people to stay inside their homes and blockade themselves in. But so many people had opened their doors out of pure shock.”

Stiles abruptly stands and takes his dad’s plate to the sink. “You don’t have to tell me anymore. I’m just morbidly curious. I just—“

His dad stands up from his chair, it makes a loud sound against the linoleum of the floor. He walks to the sink and puts an arm around Stiles’ shoulder. It’s a comforting weight. Boyd, Erica, and Isaac’s support in the center had been great, but it didn’t compete with his dad.

“It’s okay.” His dad tells him. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

But he’s not quite sure if he’s ready to learn that his dad took down Zs like him. Even rabid. Even thought they killed people. Stiles might not remember it. But he knows there are so many people who won’t be returned to their families because of what happened in the rising.

\--------

_The other stands at the door to the ruined house and moans at the sky. growls at it like it’s the source of all of this._

_He sits on the floor and watches the other. Doesn’t know how long. Just watches. Unmotivated. Not acted upon by that terrible hunger just yet._

_And still the other screams._

_He wonders if its food, gets up and looks._

_But it’s just the night sky the other is crying out for._

_A huge, full moon hangs in the night sky. Stars dead for millennia shine down on them in the darkness._

_And the wailing goes on until morning._

_It happens like that every month until they’re pulled from the forest._

**Author's Note:**

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